Auckland had three, or was it four, The End Is Nigh stories in the New Zealand Herald yesterday and, of course, WE ARE TO BLAME. I did not bother to respond. The writers’ minds are made up and they don’t wish to be confused with facts.

Convincing the populace-at-large, who are mostly scientifically illiterate and mathematically innumerate, that CAGW will visit Armageddon upon a greedy world is the CAGW clique’s most valuable achievement – far more so than wobbly models and unfalsifiable hypotheses

Just picking up on your comment re warmer periods between 1890s and 1920.
I looked through the SPECIAL CLIMATE STATEMENT 43 – INTERIM (Jan heatwave) and found that the av mean temp for 7th Jan, 2013 was 0.1C higher than 21 Dec, 1972, thus becoming the hottest day in Australia. I presume that the Bureau would have data going back to 1910 and would do ‘apples to apples’ checking for all dates.
I don’t seem to be able to google any specific heatwave for Dec 1972 but you would think that one of the days in early January 1939 would surely have been hotter.
Of course the 1896, 1906 and 1908 temperatures are not recognised but surely just the fact that these HWs happened should be mentioned when talking about extreme weather events. One would think that there were no extreme weather events before 1950.